Thoughts on Dracula

I've been trying to read Bram Stoker's Dracula for about five or sixth months now. Note that I said "trying". Every so often, I'll have to put the book down because it's time for another "Erin-is-grossed-out" break. Can I just say that I really dislike vampires? And I'm not talking about the sparkly ones, those don't even fit the archetype. (more on that later) (maybe). The first time I ever tried to read the classic book, it was a word-for-word adaption into a graphic novel. I was eleven years old. 

Can anyone guess how I reacted? If you said "She freaked out and threw the book down", you're probably right! (I think that's what happened, but I don't exactly remember). Going back and reading it as an adult meant that I was able to pick up on a lot more than "This is the Count, he drinks peoples' blood, he just killed this person!" Reading it as an adult meant that I could see how popular culture has domesticated the vampire.

The vampire of Bram Stoker's work is charming, of course, and handsome in his own way, just like most pop culture vampires. Here's where he's different from most of them though: he's absolutely, irrevocably evil. Even the sight of something with connotations of holiness pains him and drives him away! He's not nice, he's not misunderstood, and he most certainly does not sparkle! He's an icky, tricky, master of deceit. Popular culture can't handle that, it would seem. Ghosts have been pushed down to the level of Casper, Frankenstein's monster is a big old softie, and the Wolfman just wants to be scratched behind the ears. If we can't handle something, we tend to change it into something that suits us better. They wanted Dracula's charm and immortality, but not his unadulterated darkness. So they sugarcoated him, dusted him with glitter, and market vampires to teenagers.

This probably would never have come up if I hadn't decided to write a literary criticism paper on Stoker's book. Or maybe I'm just tired of seeing all the Twilight derivatives flooding the shelves of bookstores. Take your pick, I've got some garlic with their names on it.

Aside from the vampires, though, I find myself genuinely enjoying most of the book. The way that Stoker writes really keeps you guessing sometimes. Since it's completely in the form of letters, journal entries, and newspaper articles, the reader never knows more than the characters in the story do. Bram Stoker builds up suspense in such a way that by the third or fourth chapter, I was feeling as claustrophobic as Jonathan Harker! I also love the way he writes language. If someone speaks in a different accent, he writes it out phonetically so you have a pretty good idea of what it sounds like. If you end up with a different accent just be reading something out-loud and phonetically, I think that's pretty cool.

All that being said, I still haven't finished the book. (Spoilers) A certain someone is a vampire now, and I don't want to be there when that vampire is...dealt with.